A race to slow-down: nutrition revisited

Browsing through an Edit issue of Net-a-Porter June 2013 http://www.net-a-porter.com/magazine/200/contents, I came across Rosemary Ferguson’s article sharing “her secret to getting swimwear-ready: smart fasting”. Rosemary is a Former model who turned into a holistic nutritionist running her own business http://www.rosemaryferguson.co.uk/about.html. Her site gives insights into how she turned to nutrition. Her motivation was simple and sufficiently powerful: what she and her family (she has three children) eat for a happy life. There are many worldwide known names who share their attitudes towards nutrition. This post is not about whom to follow on this path. Each body and soul is unique in all possible ways.

I caught myself at thinking how food became an enemy in this race for faster, better, more efficient etc whatever. How progress and the speed of doing everything deprives the human kind of the humanity it needs to flourish and prosper spiritually. I do not need to go far to find an example. Take my own hectic lifestyle before my pregnancy: business trips, fast food lunch eaten in front on my PC, overeating during holidays, overindulging on stimulants, headake pain medication, irregular sleep, no time for sport, yoga or any kind of rebalancing activities, followed by high levels of stress accumulating, irritability and, to no surprise, unhappiness.

My pregnancy changed a lot. Luckily, a smart choice years earlier to switch to homeopathic remedies cleaned my body of chemical toxins accumulated through medication and years of birth-control pill. I was now able to hear and listen to my body. If I craved for peaches, I knew it was an indication of my iron levels. So, I would take a break from whatever important task at work I was doing to go to the local farmers’ market and buy some. During my pregnancy people were non-stop saying how good and enlightened I looked. I knew that changes in my nutrition was an important part of that.

After giving birth, my body refused dairy. Remember the old adagio “if you want to have milk, drink milk”? Aha! I breastfed for 2 years and 9 months effortlessly, with my calcium levels stable. A mother’s milk comes from fat accumulated during pregnancy and clean water you drink.

Some time ago at a regular check-up I discovered an ‘entity’ in my kidney. The doctor told me it could have been there since my birth and not every doctor pays attention to these. It still put me on an alert. I remembered coming across studies on links between dairy and cancer. These cells feed on dairy proteins (search more on the links, if you wish). And its’ not the dairy’s per se fault, it’s the additives and preservatives and other chemicals, antibiotics and hormones which come with it, in an era of race for more.

A race is a race. A decision to stop and ponder is personal. I’ve only started the journey and I am happy about it. Our bodies are temples. I cherish my body and it cherishes me back, for years to come, with love.